jimbobfury

Hi Aaron. I'd personally like to see reaction fire be buffed at least slightly as at the moment it doesn't seem too reliable, as you point out. Assault rifles and shotguns could both benefit from being more effective at reacting, which would give them more appeal over the heavier weapons in certain situations. Also, given how effective cover is at present I wondered about the following tweak to reaction fire, which would feed into the suppress/flank gameplay style: - Is it possible to add a calculation to reaction fire, so that it triggers when the chance to hit a target increases? - So for example; if a trooper has line of sight to an enemy in hard cover he could choose to reserve AP for a reaction shot instead of firing with very little chance to hit. - If the alien then moves out of cover in their turn (due to the presence of another Xenonaut attempting a flank for instance) then the overwatching trooper would take the shot as the alien breaks from cover. Is that possible at all? I think it would be a nice addition as it would represent sending an assault unit forward to flush an enemy out of cover into the sights of a supporting rifleman unit.

Yeah, this is fantastic, once I've checked the Steam version's working I think I'll be saying goodbye to Desura for good.

Regarding the discussion of the importance of cover, I'd just like to throw my thoughts into the mix: I personally would like cover to be a clear and important benefit, both for your troops and the aliens. This would lead to positioning and squad tactics being important, as they should be in a game like Xenonauts. The idea of suppressing an alien in cover so that your squad can flank them is really appealling and having to watch out for flanking aliens at the same time will lead to some very tactical engagements. However; I think it's important that "grab cover, suppress enemy, flank" doesn't become the ONLY way to deal with an enemy in cover. That would lead to it being a very obvious game mechanic rather than a natural tactical choice that you make. So, if I have 5 guys in cover, firing on 1 alien, also in cover, then it should be my choice if I want to make a flank. Say if I'm not sure the route I'd use to flank is secure, then given that in this scenario I have an overwhelming fire advantage, I could just opt to stay in cover and fire away lower accuracy shots safe in the knowledge that my number advantage gives me the edge against the alien in cover, it just might take longer to hit him. But, I also have the safety of possibly drawing unseen aliens to my position where I'm ready to deal with them, rather than stumbling across them as I make the flank move. So I guess, if a basic soldier has between a 50% - 60% chance to hit a target in the open, then that could be reduced to 25% when targeting a unit in cover. So you still have a chance to hit, but it's significantly reduced and if you want to deal with the alien quickly then flanking him would be your best bet.

Also bear in mind that whilst the troopers are static on your screen when you take the shot, if this was happening in real time then they'd probably be in motion, and therefore taking a shot with the risk of your buddy darting in front of you in a split second doesn't seem like the most sensible thing to do. Also, bunching up like that leaves you hugely vulnerable to grenade attacks. I don't see why you'd want to form your men up like that in the first place really. Sure, still do your wedge formation, but leave a couple of tiles between each trooper for firing lines and safety from area affect attacks.

Well, the game's certainly come on a lot since I last played, amazing work! One question I have which I'm not sure is a bug or working as intended; the numbers on the accuracy calculation path (which I love by the way, great addition) don't seem to quite add up. For example: - I had a trooper with a flat 45% chance to hit on open ground about 15 squares ahead of him. - There was a Sebillian behind some low rocks who I wanted to target. I hovered the aim cursor on the square next to him and the rock had a 50% appear next to it, which I thought might mean it was reducing my chance to hit by half. But the aim percentage on the target square was 18%. - Then, when I actually put the cursor on the Sebillian, the to hit chance dropped to 6%. Is there something wrong here, or am I missing something? I actually kind of liked that the cover benefitted the target quite as much as it did because I ended up having to suppress him with two guys while a third flanked around to get the kill, but I get the impression that cover maybe isn't supposed to be quite as good as it seemed. And also, unless I'm an idiot (I don't think I am...) then the numbers didn't seem to make sense to me. If this is a bug, let me know and I'll repost to the bug reports forum. Also, the snow map looks ace! Really excited for the final release now.

With the hotfix the build seems much more stable, I was able to complete the quick mission at least. However, it seems as if walls can no longer be vaulted over. And I found two Sebillians stuck hiding in some brown blocky...thing, which I think was maybe supposed to be a light scout judging by the shape of it. Although, thinking about it, since when has the quick mission included a crash site?

Yep, I've also had the game crash from a grenade hitting cover and a machine gun firing a burst at a Sebillian. I've noticed that my to hit chance hasn't been displaying even when my soldier has a clear line of site. Could this be linked at all? Could the problem be something to do with LoS calculations or something?

Have these screenshots been photoshopped at all, or are they shown here as they'll appear in the game because if so...wow! There definitely seems to be an extra level of detail and polish compared to the last alpha version I played. Brilliant stuff!

Holy...those two maps look lovely! Let's hope to see levels of this quality in the finished game. Excellent work zzz1010!

Well, thanks for the recommendation chaps, what a brilliant game! Colonel Tigh being stranded planetside when he contracted some sort of plague, Chief Tyrol being cut in two by a Mantis and Commander Adama dying in a fire somehow made me love this game, rather than hating it. I had 3 brief run throughs yesterday and didn't get very far, but I can't wait to play again later in the week (if only it was available on tablets...)

This game sounds like a lot of fun! I'd never even heard of it until I saw this thread. I'm a massive BSG fan, so I'm hoping that this game can maybe capture the feeling of the series and the boardgame (which it sounds very similar to, actually) Anybody able to confirm an Adam-ey feeling when they play this??

Yep, I can confirm this bug too. The same happens if the light drone reaction fires too. A single shot, with no sound effect and the animation also seems, rushed, somehow. Can't quite explain what I mean there but it's as if the game's not processing the action correctly and so the camera doesn't track the projectile in the right way.

Has anybody had any issues where it seems as if certain windows can't be fired through properly? On the new industrial light scout map, an alien in the large, central building couldn't be targeted by any of my troops, regardless of which window they were stood outside of. Other times however (on the quick battle terror map) shooting through windows seemed to work correctly. So, is it just a case of some window tiles not being set correctly?

Yep, same from me Gijs-Jan. The AI is already noticeably more reactive to their surroundings and any nearby threats, fantastic work in such a short space of time. How do aliens choose their targets at the moment, as the only issue I had was that they almost seemed reluctant to engage my troops in some cases, taking shots at civilians who were much further away instead. I guess they may have been prioritised if my troops were in cover?

These are great for adding variety to the game. It's amazing how fresh the game feels just from having some variety. The tiles around the Chinook seem to be mis-set a little, as there are weird issues with line of sight being blocked through what should be open space, and the far side of the Chinook appears shorter than the nearside on maps where it spawns side on. All in all though, great work man!

As the title says, I've encountered this 3 or 4 times now; I've sent a trooper upstairs and when they've moved back down the sprite and shadow are completely gone, only the active soldier icon remains. This lasts for the rest of the ground mission.

I've had this happen consistantly in the latest patch, I can't remember it happening prior to 13.1. It seems to be if my reaction fire interupts an alien unit firing, the game freezes and eventually crashes to desktop. I wonder if it's because the game is calculating both shots simultaneously? This also stops the camera from tracking the projectiles correctly, so maybe making the system complete one shot before the reaction fire shot is made would solve the problem?

Nice work! I'll be sure to test these out later and leave you some feedback!

Just the fact that there's any sort of AI update is music to my ears! Do we have to wait until the next milestone to get our hands on this, or will you be releasing any incremental patches, Chris? Damn, I'd not read all the previous pun posts before I added this...er...there's my credibility up in smoke...

Is anybody else having real problems with Desura? I can't get the download to complete successfully, and I've tried about 4 times now.

Has anybody tried skipping time to the point that Scouts appear, rather than Light Scouts, just to see if it's an issue with the Light Scout crash site?

This sounds fantastic. The only problem I see is between this and the Fall of Cybertron demo on the xbox, I may lose my girlfriend. Thanks a lot, game developers! <shakes fist>

In my experience, the UI on the equipment selection screen is the biggest stumbling block here, as you've mentioned. When I tinkered around with adding different ammo types, I ended up just having to add an entirely new weapon for it; so I had "Shotgun - Slug" "Shotgun - Buckshot" as two different weapons, for example. What I never got round to trying out (and I keep meaning to) is taking the one weapon type and taking some of the other weapon's ammo into a mission (so, taking the Slug shotgun from the example above, but taking 2 clips of slug ammo and a clip of Buckshot ammo too) In theory, as long as the weapons are setup to take the different ammo types, this could be a work-around for the equipment screen UI problem.

The main thing I'd like to see with the tech tree is more tough choices for the player. At the moment, the game may as well begin with the Mig already researched as there's no reason not to set the research going the second you launch the game. If there were a couple of research topics to choose from, then that would allow the player to prioritise as they see fit. As the game is roughly split into three parts; these being management, interceptions and ground combat, how about one initial research topic which ties into each of these, so the player can choose which area of the game they want to get the best start on?

Amazing stuff! Are you really on course to add all of those first updates in v13 in a week's time?!? That would be awesome! Keep up the good work guys.